


Jade

by playtherain (orphan_account)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, i guess, mermaid au, rose no, rose stop having odd lesbian thoughts for a Lovecraftian sea creature
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2015-03-24
Packaged: 2018-02-16 16:35:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2276904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/playtherain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Homestuck AU, Rose/Kanaya. Mythical creatures are sometimes real and they are also apparently sometimes really hot for no reason.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Walk

Rose Lalonde turned off the television with a sigh, massaging her temple. Despite the loss of power, the sound continued to buzz irritatingly through her skull. The balmy moon threw silvery light across the living room floor of her loft apartment in LA. Tonight it was full, a perfect white circle in the black sky, and long spindly shadows stretched from the edges of the furniture. The AC was turned on to full, and its quiet humming could be heard distantly from the bedroom. The hem of her oversized nightshirt tickled her thighs as she fell onto the couch, sinking into the numerous downy pillows placed upon it. Their fur and cotton exteriors stuck to her skin, making her break out in cold sweat. In her displeasure, she flung the vile things straight over the balcony behind her head - after which, they fell 31 floors to the pavement beneath.

Rose found herself wishing they'd hit somebody, or at least startled a bird on the way down. They really were horrible pillows.

Cool leather pressed almost lovingly against the backs of her legs, and she mentally thanked the cows who had sacrificed their lives for this comfy piece of furniture. Although really, she was kind of pissed-off. Was everything in their apartment alive at some point? The pillows she had just lobbed out the window were real fur. There was a stuffed cougar over the fireplace. She didn't even bother to look accusingly at the elephant-foot umbrella holder by the door - it knew how she felt. They had already talked it over.  
  
Summer was always difficult for Rose; her marble-white skin burned easily, and she simply couldn't stand humid places. She was almost always in a terrible mood. Her apartment was like a sauna during the day, and she had long since taken to shedding most of her clothing and sulking in front of the AC and other TV with icecream and back-to-back marathons of either Oprah, Antiques Roadshow, or Extreme Makeover Home Edition.

This suited her just fine.

Rose dragged her eyelids open, staring at her ceiling. All that bright sunlight had worn her out. She got no respite, hiding from Vitamin D like a sunblock-wielding vampire, under the covers of her ridiculous, unnecessarily-large bed. Honestly, what was she expected to do in a bed of such monstrous size? Hold rave parties? Rose had made sure to leave an especially long note on the refrigerator expressing her tremendous gratitude to the person who had bought the bed.  
It's hard, being so amazingly considerate. It's hard and nobody notices you going out of your way to dot the i's with hearts.  
Sitting upright, Rose glared blearily at the coffee table. Her summer homework lay all over it, barely started. Blank essay papers covered almost every inch of the glass surface, accompanied by text books, pencils, and eraser filings. Despite working on it for over 3 hours a day for the past week, she'd not been able to think of an acceptable subject. Her brain was frustratingly empty.

Rose slid to the floor, kneeling on the rug and shaking her head. This was the first time she could ever recall having absolutely no ideas. Not one single snarky bubble of thought came to the surface - and this was a Legends and Folklore essay. The possibilities were endless - she could so easily write about her beloved Lovecraftian tentacle monsters!  
But the drive simply wasn't there. Perhaps, had her mother been home and not in the Caribbean, she could have provided some inspiration.  
The hum of the AC and the distant washing of the waves against the shore were the only sounds for miles. No one was awake tonight; it was Sunday, and most had school or work tomorrow. Rose refused to admit that she was a little lonely in her huge loft apartment, having been the only occupant of it for several weeks now. The liquor cabinet was locked - a sure sign that her mother would not be returning anytime soon.   
Rose had read the round-the-world cruise schedual responsible for her mother's absence, seeing as it had been more or less jammed in her face. The trip itself would take just over 10 months to complete. She'd been invited, of course - her mom had attempted to lure her in with promises of time off school, sunbathing, and shirtless lifeguards. Rose had smiled grimly at this last mention, declining the offer politely whilst trying very hard not to scoff at the idiocy of the whole thing.  
Shirtless lifeguards? Rose was sure her mother had mentioned that just to try to get a reaction out of her. Intolerable woman.  
Rose's fingers dug into the fabric across her thighs. Her glance around the dark, empty apartment was carefully blank, but inside, she was tensed.   
Her homework papers rustled gently in the slight breeze coming through the open balcony, filling the room with the warm, pleasant aroma of the sea. The blonde on the rug mentally slapped herself.   
Pull yourself together, Lalonde.  
Standing, Rose paused yet again, having no idea what to do next. Her brain was frazzled, jumbling information around like a blender. She was overworked and stressed.  
Perhaps she'd do something to unwind.

Her bare feet glided smoothly over the carpet of the sitting room; her hand pushing the door aside. It made no sound; it was far too fancy for that. Simply touching the wood made Rose feel like she should want to wipe her fingerprints off it until it was spotless. The hallway was no different. Pieces of ridiculous and hideously-expensive art dotted walls everywhere. 5 other doors lined either side of the walkway, leading to the main bathroom, the first and second guest rooms, the study, and her room, respectively. It was the last door, at the end of the hall, that she ended up passing through. She took great care not to accidentally brush up against any of the artwork as she pushed the gold handle on the door down, hearing a heavy click as it swung open beneath her hand.  
This room was darker than the rest of the house, and Rose liked it that way. Unlike everywhere else, she had thick velvet curtains over the windows in here. Her bed, its crisp white sheet brushing against the carpet, sat against the far wall. A matching dresser stood behind it, her hairband resting on top beside assorted hair clips. Her bookcase covered the entire west wall, lined with literature she had bought herself - partly to stick it to her mother, but mostly because she did not want that woman to know what sort of books she was buying. The majority of them were old fiction, spines loose and covers flaking. These smelled like dust and yellowing paper, which Rose loved. Quite a few were tomes of ancient magic, strange runes printed along their thick spines. There were school binders in there, along with history records, knitting magazines, thesauruses, dictionaries, folklore books, and fabric catalogues (they belonged to her mother, and she used them only for stashing poetry).  
None of these were what she wanted hidden from her mother.  
Under her bed, in a cardboard box, were stacks and stacks of trashy romance novels. They were her greatest weakness. She always felt like a criminal purchasing them, constantly looking over her shoulder for any sign of pink. When she'd been handed her change, the book was quickly whisked under her jacket and the receipt thrown out. She'd high-tail it home, lock her door behind her, prop a chair under the handle - and only then would she pull the box out to add her latest buy to her collection for night-reading. Occasionally she'd wonder if they were worth the effort, the terror she felt whenever she came home to discover that her mother had cleaned her room. But she never found them, nor mentioned anything.

And Rose had a feeling that she would have mentioned them, or at least leave subtle hints around the house, had she been discovered. Not a single one of her romance novels featured a man anywhere.  
Rose knelt on the carpet now, doing her usual check to make sure her box was still there. The square shadow against the wall was reassuring, as always, and she exhaled quietly before getting to her feet again. She faced the east part of her room now, which was largely made up of an aquarium.  
The oversized fishtank took up the entire east wall. It had been a gift for Rose on her 14th birthday. She'd come home to it one day after school, and had carefully concealed her joy, having been given something she actually liked. Rose loved marine life, and her cunning mother had exploited this.

The tank was wired to light up when the glass was touched, illuminating the whole thing with soft, ocean blue-green light, and made to turn off with a second touch. When she'd received it, there had been a variety of tropical fish living inside it. Now, it was empty. Those fish were never meant to live very long.  
Now, as Rose passed the unlit tank, she watched her own reflection sliding across the smooth surface. Her mother had offered to buy her more fish when the first lot had died, but Rose had declined. Something had felt right, now that it was empty - like it was supposed to be that way.  
Even so, a man still came to service the empty aquarium once a week, keeping the water inside perfectly clean and the glass spotless. Mom had questioned Rose's motives to this; there were no fish, why take care of the tank?

Rose didn't know. She just felt like she should.

Her fingers met their reflections, and she was bathed in soft teal light. When it was lit up like this, the sheer size of the tank was evident - her room had been significantly downsized to accommodate it. She hadn't minded in the slightest.   
Rocks and plants covered the aquarium floor beside Rose's feet, half-buried in the sand around them. Seaweed swayed gently in the water. Tiny jets concealed beneath stones occasionally loosed a bubble or two, which floated lazily to the surface, at the roof. Rose felt like she could step into it, as if the glass wasn't there. A strange calm settled over her mind, smothering her frustration for the moment. She lost track of time, just simply staring into the empty water before her. The far wall of the tank was painted like more sea, making the aquarium look much bigger than it was.

Eventually, she tore herself away from her daydreaming, touching the glass again to turn the lights off. She needed to get out of the house, to the point where she found herself not caring where she went.  
Discarding her nightshirt onto her bed carelessly, Rose pulled on a pair of shorts and a sleeveless hoodie, slipped on her sandals, and shoved her hairband in place. Not the most glamorous attire, but the streets were deserted at 2 am. No one would see her anyway. Pausing only to pick up her keys, she headed back down the hallway, towards the front door.


	2. Driftwood

Rose wound up at the beach, as she knew she would.  
Her apartment building was only 2 blocks away. If she were to turn around, she could see her flat; the moonlight gleaming off the glass wall, many floors up in the air. The balcony door, swinging gently in the wind.  
But she had no desire to look at it. Her eyes were trained on the sea.  
The sound of the waves completely filled her senses. She kicked off her sandals, leaving them behind her as she buried her toes into the cool sand. Not a single living thing was awake out there; no obnoxious children making sandcastles, no cars on the street a little ways behind her.  
The moon cast a near-perfect reflection onto the calm sea, undisturbed by the current. It rippled slightly with the gentle tide, a silver disk on black silk. Rose was standing on the very shore by then. The wind combed its fingers slowly through her short blonde hair, almost lovingly.  
She always ended up at the beach when she was stressed. It was like a magnet, drawing her to wade in the outgoing tide and to skip shells across the bay and to just think - not about her mother, or school, or the weather - not about anything, really. She never went during the day; the noise and cheer and activity was suffocating and annoying. At night, the shore belonged only to her, and the privacy was soothing.  
It had long since become a friend - the sea would listen to her ranting without a single complaint.  
She left half-sunken footprints in the wet sand by the water as she paced silently, calculating. Being home alone was actually rather pleasant, and god knows she enjoyed the silence. No more being woken at 7 AM to her mother vacuuming the already-spotless carpets, drink in hand. And she had several weeks left to write her essay. Nothing to worry about.

Her musings took her far up the beach, towards the cliffs at the mouth of the bay. Her eyes were locked on the sea, watching the sky on the horizon began to tinge with purple. The sun would rise soon.  
Rose took a step away from the water, settling down on the sand to watch the coming dawn. Stars glittered in the changing band of color in the distance, illuminated by the first ray of sunlight of the day. The sky turned pink, then orange, as the sun peeked its golden head up over the edge of the world. The surface of the sea mirrored everything exactly. Colours painted across her face, Rose looked up the shore to her left, back the way she had come. Her footprints remained, vanishing into the distance. And then she looked to her right, and nearly jumped out of her skin.  
There, a few meters away from her, was someone else, face-down on the sand.  
Right from the first glance, Rose could tell that the figure wasn't quite.....right. It had short black hair, reaching the nape of its neck. Two horns jutted out of its skull on the top half of its head, orange at the base before fading to yellow at the tips. The right one was bent down, like a fishing-hook barb. Its skin was pale gray, almost white, and it was slender. It wore no clothes, from what she could see.  
Rose edged closer to the mysterious creature, her worry laced with fear of the unknown. Whatever this was, it was weird and alien and possibly dangerous. Maybe.  
At only a few yards away, Rose noticed that something silky and light green was stuck to each of the creature's outer forearms. Its lower body was completely submerged in the sea, and was strangely angled towards the cliffs - whenever the tide washed in, it swept over its upper back and crested on its neck. A strange and powerful sense of dread rose in her gut, and Rose kept her eyes trained obediently anywhere but its lower body. Something in her knew that the second she dared look, all hell would break loose. So she spent her time examining the sand, her feet, the pale alabaster skin of the zonked-out whatever-it-was in front of her. Keep it together, Lalonde.  
As the sun climbed higher in the sky, the material on the being's arms glittered in the new light. Rose's first thought was some kind of fabric. Maybe this really was a human, come from a fancy dress party and drunk off their head, and Rose was merely sleep-deprived. Thoughts of her mom suddenly invaded her mind, and she scowled almost involuntarily at the memory.  
Rose noticed the tide rising then. If she didn't do something, this person-thing would drown....if it was even alive in the first place. The blonde crouched beside the unmoving figure, picking up one of its wrists gently from the sand and feeling for a pulse. Sure enough, she was met with the weak-but-present throbbing of blood through veins.  
She set the hand back down, and with surprisingly little effort, rolled the creature onto its back. Its hips stayed twisted to the right, regardless of the change in position. As its torso turned, Rose saw that it was female - and a rather fetching one, at that.  
She looked like she was sleeping - her eyelashes rested on her cheeks, their length so great. Her ears were like that of elves' from children’s' fairytales. Her nose was small and pointed. Sand covered almost all of the left half of her face. The front of her chest had an odd green fabric over it, similar to a backless gown. Her lips - painted black naturally or by make-up, Rose couldn't tell - were parted slightly over long, needle-sharp fangs, like a vampire's.  
That should have scared Rose. She should have put that infuriatingly attractive monster back down onto the sand and run away, instead of having odd lesbian thoughts. The rational part of her brain was nagging her to leave, but for once, Rose ignored rationality completely. She took hold of the creature's upper arms and dragged her from the surf.

What came out was even more reason to flee. Finally, she could steel herself no longer, and looked down at the girl's lower body as it emerged from the sand. Where Rose was expecting legs came a long green tail, like that of a fish, with a thick metal harpoon driven completely through it. This immediately explained the odd hip angle; thanks to the harpoon, she could not lay flat. Rose's stomach twisted slightly in pity. This person must have been in agony.  
However, she was still wary of the damage the fish-girl could do to her should she wake up. Those fangs were burned into her memory. So when the girl's entire body was clear of the sea, Rose settled her slightly on her side to clear the harpoon before letting go completely, and moving to further inspect her find.  
The figure before her very closely resembled a mermaid, an old make-believe sea-creature, if the novels she had in her bookshelf were anything to go by. The tales descibed them as having the upper body of a woman, and the lower body of a fish, which pretty much hit the nail on the head.  
Oh, yeah. Legendary sea-beast washes up on a beach. Seems legit.  
Rose's carefully-maintained poker face took on a twinge of hysteria as she racked her brain for more information.

Depending on the story she read, they either helped lost sailors home, or ate them alive. Rose stared blankly at the fangs again.

None of the tales she'd ever come across had ever mentioned fangs, or horns, or even gray skin.  
Was nothing about this situation making sense? Rose was very sure she was sleep-deprived, and in reality, had passed out on the sand some time ago. Choosing to humour her brain, however, she continued her analysis.  
The ocean had been slowing the wound's bleeding, and now that the black-haired girl-beast was out of the water, it had started again. Jade green rolled down the glittery scales of her tail, dripping onto the sand. A fin on her lower back was torn completely down the middle; it was the same colour and texture as the stuff on her forearms. Rose dared to touch it, despite her heightening fear and complete certainty that the whole thing was a dream, and found it to be soft and silky. The V-shape at the end of her tail was the same material, judging by appearance.  
Rose blinked, face perfectly blank now, calculating. She had felt that fin. She had actually felt it - she was sure she couldn't have imagined it. Which meant that the situation she found herself in was reality; she was not asleep and there was a mermaid, passed out and mortally wounded, on the sand before her.  
Which raised the question: what would happen to her if Rose left her to be discovered by someone else?  
A life in laboratory, her body filled with needles, unable to swim around in the tiny capsule of her prison. Her tail fins missing huge chunks where they'd cut into it to try and discover the secret behind its sparkle.  
Or, what if her injuries killed her before then? What if she died, in a few minutes' time, right there in front of her? Her body would be paraded around the newspapers, accused of being a government hoax, then stuffed and put to gather dust in a museum.  
None of those outcomes would do.  
With this taken into account, there was only one other option.

Slowly, carefully, she dropped into a crouch before the mermaid's body. Rose saw her chest moving up and down quickly, her breathing strained and heavy. The blonde had to get her to water fast, or else she would die. At least, that was how most aquatic life worked, and it wasn't like there was a book entitled "How To Care For Your Man-Eating Fish-Person Hybrid" to correct herself with.  
Slipping her arms underneath the limp, water-slick body, Rose braced her knees for a great lift, but the mermaid weighed much less than anticipated - and would definitely weigh less were the harpoon absent. Rose wondered if all merpeople were this light - or if she'd simply stumbled upon a particularly slender one. Her trip back up the beach took her a much shorter time than the one down. Silky tail fins brushed Rose's ankles and jade blood dripped from her left wrist and elbow as she hurried across the sand in the early morning, the mermaid's head tucked into her neck. With the sun now almost fully clear of the horizon, she had very little time to get back to her apartment without being seen carrying the girl into her apartment building. She could almost picture old Mrs. Patterson looking out her window and promptly shrieking for Bill, her husband, to "come see that odd Lalonde girl now! I could swear, she's carrying this here mermaid! No, you old coot, I'm serious! Stop watching Cliff Richard!"  
When she reached her shoes, she slipped into them quickly and headed up to the road with hardly a pause to strap them correctly. She didn't like the amount of light already touching the side walk.  
Rose wasn't sure how she could help an injured mermaid. She didn't know how she was going to hide it from people, or what they ate. Hell, she hadn't even planned on where she was going to put it - but she could work those things out later. Right now, saving its life was the main priority.  
Rose had never been happier to finally see her building's front door. She all but ran into the deserted lobby, crossing the floor to the elevator and begging the higher powers above to let them go unnoticed. Shifting the mermaid awkwardly to one arm, the blonde jabbed the elevator button desperately, watching the numbers tick down from 14 to 1 impatiently. She would have to wait for 31 floors going up.  
Finally, the doors swept open, and she bolted inside. The mermaid was gingerly set on the floor in a corner, mindful of the harpoon, as the button for the topmost stop was pressed, and the DOORS CLOSED sign flashed. The trip upwards began, and Rose exhaled in relief. Almost safe. Just a few seconds more.

Her unconscious companion sat slumped against the wall, head drooped down and hands lying limply. Her strange green blood dripped slowly onto the ornately-patterned carpet of the elevator. Thankfully, the design was ugly enough to disguise it. Rose wiped her arm as best she could on the floor, not wanting to stain her white clothing any more than it already was.  
The long metal pole in the tail was the only thing about the mermaid that sat upright. Rose tilted her head at it, eyeing the broken chain around the top. Just what had happened? How had this creature survived whatever it was?  
The lift continued to ascend the floors, passing the 21st. Rose bent and gingerly gathered her charge in her arms again, turning to face the doors and holding her breath anxiously. Her house key was in one hand, ready to unlock her apartment A.S.A.P. This was the final stretch.  
The doors whooshed open, and she was off, power-walking down the hallway towards one of 2 possible destinations on the 31st floor. The only other thing on that level were the housekeeper's quarters, and as she passed that door, she broke into a jog. Her heart thumped crazily in her chest, battering against her ribcage, as she reached her door and unlocked it beneath the knee-joint in the mermaid's tail, throwing herself inside the flat.  
Rose had never re-locked it behind her faster.


	3. Contact

Exactly 4 hours and 13 minutes after Rose found the creature, it woke up.

She had been sitting on her bathroom rug, next to her tub, knitting. The mermaid in question was still unconscious, lying in the half-full bath and showing no signs of movement. Rose would have thought her dead if she hadn't seen her breathing. Her tail had stopped bleeding.  
The day grew lighter as she sat. The silence was pierced only by the clicking of her needles, and the occasional sound of early-morning traffic. A big sunbeam stretched across the plush brown rug, and Rose found herself enjoying the warmth.  
And then, without warning, the mermaid rocketed upright, her eyes flying open and water splashing all places. The peace was shattered beyond repair.  
The girl's entire body writhed and struggled, her hands clawing at the sides of the bathtub. Her tail repeatedly bashed against a hard surface, and with a pitiful cry, she fell back into shallow, warm water, breathing hard and still struggling very weakly. Finally, she slumped to the bottom of the tub on her side, exhausted.  
Rose was not sure how to proceed from that point. She was afraid to speak. The weight of the situation hit her like a ton of bricks then. She was actually doing this.  
As the mermaid finally noticed the blonde sitting beside her, her pupils dilated. She froze.

* * *

 

The blonde creature on the rug opened its mouth after a while, and said "All done?" in the language she had come to despise. The tones of its voice were surprisingly dainty and pleasant to listen to - the human tongue did not sound nearly as gutteral coming from this one.  
Kanaya reasoned that it must be female, which relieved her greatly. She prefered females over males - in humans' and her own species. They were generally less violent, and much better-looking.  
Her tone of voice did not imply any anger - it was merely curious, and worried. Worried for her? She could not tell.  
Regardless, Kanaya felt no obligation to reply. She just continued to stare up into the face of the human girl, silent, whilst her instincts kept her on edge.  
After a moment of no communication whatsoever, the blonde frowned, motioned to herself, and said "Rose."  
The word did not mean anything to Kanaya, but she understood immediately that this was the human's name. She blinked in reply, hopefully letting this Rose person know that she understood, but was too tired to move.  
Rose nodded. At least Kanaya recognised that.  
For a while, the two of them simply stared at the other; Kanaya a bit more warily than her companion. The Rose-human, at least, did not appear to harbor any desire of violence, which was strange to her. Were there any place she could swim to at that moment, she had no doubt she would be fleeing for her life, injured or not. Her heart was still thudding violently.  
But at least she was not dead.  
Rose picked something up beyond Kanaya's field of vision. When the blonde human came back in sight, she was revealed to be holding a scrap of damp fabric. Kanaya watched as that hand slowly lowered over the lip of the tank, towards her tail, and she rumbled deep in her chest - quietly, but threateningly. Her irritance brought some amount of energy back to her, and she pushed her upper body against the sloping tank wall with her arms, so that she was sitting upright. Then she folded her hands in her lap, staring her human companion down with narrowed, annoyed eyes, trying to regain what little scraps of dignity and grace she still had.  
"I'm just going to clean you up," the Rose-human said, looking over at Kanaya carefully and holding her hands up in surrender. Kanaya's scowl did not fade, but the rumbling stopped, and she merely looked away.  
After a little while, Rose's hands moved back towards the harpoon, and this time, Kanaya let her. The rag dabbed gently around the wound, stinging rather horribly, but the raven-haired mermaid gritted her teeth and endured it. Green was slowly replacing the white of the cloth.  
Kanaya now took the time to see what sort of damage she had endured, and was genuinely shocked to discover that the spear had passed completely through her tail. A horrified squeak wound its way from her mouth as she stared, distraught, at her ruined scales. Rose's head tilted in her direction after this as she mopped up the blood, gauging the mermaid's reaction. "It may not be as bad as it looks," she said calmly, returning her attention to the rag, which was positively soaked through by now. The blonde cupped some of the water Kanaya was sitting in, trickling it over the area where harpoon met flesh. It tickled.  
Not as bad as it looked? She may never swim again! Kanaya could not possibly fathom how she was to remove the metal spear, let alone recover from the resulting injuries. The back of her head met the rim of the polished white tank as she groaned, on the verge of tears.  
She would probably die here.  
The Rose-human was silent, save for the sound of the rag being wrung out over more water. The harpoon clanged noisily against the tank edge where it rested as Kanaya shifted, lifting her head to get a better look at her apparent savior.  
She was kneeling on a brown fur rug, which rested on a smooth white surface. She wore body-coverings of the latter colour. Her skin was very pale, which was surprising. All of the other humans the jade-blood had seen were darker. She had long eyelashes, this Rose girl, which Kanaya found herself liking against her will. Rose's ears were rounded, unlike her own. Her hair was like strands of sun, gleaming in the daylight coming through a glass-covered hole on the far wall. It curled around her jaw and feathered around her neck.  
In retrospect, Kanaya reasoned, humans were sort of nice-looking. Especially this one.  
"Do you talk?" Rose said then, and she nearly missed hearing it through her quiet observation. For a moment, she considered ignoring the question, feigning ignorance. But the human had been kind to her so far, and Kanaya could see no reason not to give her thanks, at least.  
And so, she opened her mouth, and spoke Rose's language for the first time in her life.  
"Yes."  
The blonde's eyebrows came up, and she folded the now-clean rag on the floor before looking up at her companion.  
"I was starting to believe you had no idea what I was saying."  
"Your language is awful."  
Kanaya wrinkled her nose a little as the words tumbled awkwardly off her tongue, a mangled mix of fang-muffled consonants and sharp vowels. Rose seemed to find this amusing.  
"I'd imagine so, to one who hasn't grown up with it."  
She got to her feet then, crossing the room. Bipedalism was so strange to Kanaya; she couldn't help watching Rose's hips moving under the fabric of her lower body-covering. She imagined herself walking, with legs instead of a tail. It was completely ridiculous.  
"Assuming your species have names, may I ask yours?" Rose called from beside what looked like a huge box, on top of which she placed the folded rag. She busied herself with something else up there, and Kanaya turned back to facing her tail. She wrung her hands in her lap, staring at the harpoon. Nothing about this situation was comforting to her, and she desperately wanted to be free of the metal in her tail. It smelled sour, like rust. An idea seeped through her brain then, and she said, "I will tell you, if you take....the sharp out of me."  
Rose's shadow fell over the fur on the floor, and she hummed thoughtfully. "I can't," she said, moving to kneel beside the tank again.  
"It has a backwards-facing barb at the end. Kind of like your horn."  
Kanaya cursed lowly in her own language. They were going to have to cut the darn thing to get it out. It wasn't all that thick, perhaps half as slight as her arm, but it was heavy, and wouldn't break easily. Rose was frowning at it again, possibly thinking of ways to snap it.  
The metal was cold, and it was beginning to numb her wound, much to her relief. Her hips were aching from being twisted to the left for so long, but it was becoming less and less noticeable with time.  
Kanaya didn't want to think about how she might have gotten here. She didn't want to think about her tail. She didn't want to be reminded about the fact that she was actually conversing with a human, and letting that human touch her.  
So, she rested her head on the tank edge, closed her eyes, and nothing more was said.


	4. Harpoon

Rose slept on the rug that night, not wanting to leave the mermaid's side should she need help. They had exchanged a few words earlier in the day, but Rose had been unable to pry a name from her unwilling guest. Frustrating as it was, they had still communicated. Rose rather fancied the thought that she was the first to ever do so with another sentinent species.  
The alien creature was surprisingly elegant - she hadn't raised her voice once, and even her somewhat-animalistic tendancies were reigned in, muted. She held herself in such a way that Rose felt the beginnings of jealosy stir in her stomach. Ridiculous.  
When all was said and done, not a whole lot had been learned. The girl spoke English, albeit awkwardly. Those teeth of hers got in the way, seeing as she was apparently unused to the language. Her blood really was jade green, and her irises were jet black. The sclera were honey-gold, which had startled Rose a little.  
The dark-haired stranger had passed out not long after they'd talked, and hadn't woken up since. Rose was beginning to get worried.  
A more pressing concern, however, was the harpoon. Rose's mother kept a small crate of tools in the hallway closet, and among them was a handsaw. It was becoming increasingly evident that the toolbox was going to be the only way the harpoon would be removed. There was no way Rose was going to call someone else to remove it. It wasn't a particularly thick harpoon: on the contrary, it was fairly thin. The rolling pin in the kitchen was far thicker than the metal rod through the mermaid's tail. Rose was fairly sure she could saw through it. But she wasn't open to trying anything without the mermaid's consent.  
When Rose awoke on the rug, the mermaid was awake again, staring out the window at the morning sky with a serene look on her face. "I have not seen the sun rise in a long time," she said to Rose, before the human could so much as open her mouth. They sat in a comfortable silence for a while, Rose watching the mermaid watching the sun, before the pretty creature in the bathtub finally turned around. She no longer looked quite as angry when viewing the human, but she was still somewhat wary.  
"I have an idea on how to remove that harpoon," Rose said, and watched as the mermaid's perfectly-sculpted eyebrows raised a little. As the blonde began to explain her idea with the handsaw, she knew that the mermaid completely understood everything she was saying. "It will hurt," finished Rose, to which the fish-girl replied with "I know. But we must remove it."

And so Rose went to fetch the handsaw, she paused to gather the first-aid kit from the same closet, bring it and the tool back to the bathroom. She let the water out of the bathtub, and wet a cloth for the mermaid to put on her forehead, which she accepted without complaint. After a slow intake of breath, Rose raised the saw to the harpoon and began to saw through it as gently as she could, holding it still with her other hand. The mermaid's brow furrowed a bit, but she said nothing. After around fifteen minutes of steady sawing, the barbed end of the harpoon was finally loose enough to break off. With a satisfying clang, the spike fell into the tub, and the mermaid's face lit up minutely. It was refreshing to see.  
"Here comes the hard part," Rose said to her companion, and the mermaid obediently and simultaneously gripped the edges of the tub and turned her hips around so that the chain end was facing Rose. "Ready?"  
The mermaid gritted her teeth and nodded fiercely. Closing her hands around the harpoon, Rose steeled herself, then pulled it from the mermaid's tail in one smooth motion. She wailed, long and loud, her tailfins flapping weakly and her back arching. It made Rose sick to see and hear. Without really thinking about it, she discarded the harpoon on the rug and leaned over the bathtub to soothe the writhing girl. She felt terrible.  
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she whispered, as the mermaid's cries eventually watered down. "It's out now."

With trembling limbs, the raven-haired creature pushed herself up on her arms and looked down at her tail, which was bleeding again, but free of the harpoon. She wiggled her tailfins once more, winced, then looked over at Rose helplessly. "I'll bandage it for you," Rose managed after a while, opening the first aid kit beside her and removing two rolls of bandages. The mermaid was perfectly compliant, allowing Rose to lift up her tail to wrap the lengths of cotton around it. It was quick work, and Rose washed her hands of the mermaid's strange green blood in the sink. "Kanaya," came the silvery voice behind her, and the blonde turned around slowly after a moment.  
"Pardon?"  
"My name. I am honouring our deal."  
For some odd reason, this struck something in Rose, and she smiled to herself as she said the name aloud, testing it on her tongue. "It's nice to meet you."

Kanaya just blinked at Rose, in what the human girl had come to learn was a way of conveying an understanding when there were no words.


	5. Faux-pas

Kanaya lay in Rose's bathtub for the better part of a week, and Rose faithfully changed her bandages every 6 hours. She noted that her tail was healing, and the bleeding had subsided. Kanaya assured her that she was feeling less pain.  
"It is beginning to numb," she admitted, after a brief pause as Rose discarded some dirty bandages in the bathroom trash. "Though I am not sure if that means I am healing."  
The blonde chewed her lip thoughtfully. "I wish there was someone I could take you to, but to be perfectly honest, I don't trust anyone to see you."  
Kanaya didn't respond at all to this. Her face remained blank. After a few seconds, the two of them regarding eachother silently, Kanaya turned her head to the window. Her brow furrowed a little.

"Why did you do this?"

Rose stopped, halfway through digging around in the first aid kit for fresh bandages. "Do what?" she asked innocently, and returned to her search as if she'd never paused. Kanaya appeared to think for a moment, choosing the right words - "Why did you rescue me? I am not a human."  
Rose huffed a sigh.

"Believe it or not," - a pause, to lift Kanaya's tail out of the water - "some humans posess things called consciences. They feel that they should to do the right thing, and they feel bad when they do the wrong thing. Species really has nothing to do with it."  
Kanaya considered this, then said "Does injuring me like this go against a typical human conscience?" Rose nodded.  
"Oh, definitely. Most humans with consciences know that they shouldn't torture another living being."

This seemed to annoy Kanaya, because the end of her tail flicked up and she snorted "Then the humans fishing in my home waters have none of this conscience."  
The blonde almost scolded her companion for thrashing about when she was hurt, but thought better of it. Waiting until Kanaya appeared to have calmed down, Rose tacked on "I did say some humans. Not all of them."

Kanaya was not always in a talkative mood, so Rose savoured their conversations when they occured. She'd started going back to her own room to sleep, now that the mermaid was no longer in danger of dying if she looked away for 5 minutes. With the large bathroom occupied, she had taken to bathing in the kitchen - not the most dignified thing, but it was all she had.  
At some point late on the 5th night, Rose decided to start keeping a journal about Kanaya, for herself to read back on. She reasoned that it might help her understand a few things later on.

_June 6th_  
_"I found an injured mermaid on the beach a few days ago. Not the softest way to begin a journal, but no amount of beating around the proverbial shrub would make it easier for me to admit this._  
_I rescued, and now have semi-regular conversations with, a mermaid named Kanaya._  
_At least, I believe she is a mermaid. If there is a word for her, our language doesn't have it. I've never heard of a mermaid with grey skin and orange horns. Google is frighteningly barren on the subject. But as five days have gone past and she has not yet attempted to eat me, I can safely assume that she bears me no real ill will._  
_Talking with her is.....strange. I feel so much younger than she is sometimes, but from what I've begun to decipher from her concept of time, she's only about a year older than me. It's the way she speaks English, I suppose._

_Her injury has changed since I removed the harpoon that had previously been lodged in her tail. The bleeding has slowed, and it appears to be closing at a surprising rate. I am changing the bandages regularly, and she isn't complaining of too much pain."_  
She stopped, her pen hovering over the paper, before writing:  
_"Sometimes, she reminds me of myself."_

It was late one night when Rose was changing into her pyjamas in her room when she noticed it. The great glass wall of the fishtank staring back at her in the dim light of the lamp on her nightstand, forgotten in the recent drama. It was plenty big enough for Kanaya. It would, at least, be more comfortable than her bathtub.  
She brought the idea up to Kanaya the following morning, and to her surprise, Kanaya agreed. "I would appreciate the room to move."  
With her permission, Rose disappeared into the maintenance room for the tank, a small closet behind her own room, climbed up the small staircase, and opened the large top hatch. The closet continued up past the ceiling level - it had to, with the size of the tank. Rose wasn't sure how her mother had managed to get planning permission for that.  
Ducking back into the bathroom, Rose gingerly lifted Kanaya from the tub, carrying her in almost the same way as she had on that first harrowing trip to her apartment. Kanaya locked her arms loosely around Rose's neck as the blonde human ferried her into the closet. Kanaya appraised the tank in silence from the top of the stairwell. "It seems rather cramped, to live in a dark tank in here," she sniffed after a while, as Rose lowered her into the water.  
"It's much larger than it looks. Wait here."  
Kanaya held onto the edge of the tank, peering around the closet, as Rose half-jogged into her own room. Once there, she knocked on her side of the glass, which lit the tank up. She saw Kanaya's tail, moving gingerly from side to side, and then Kanaya's whole body came into view as she dropped into the tank with a surprised look on her face. Rose waved.

Kanaya approached the glass and appeared to say something to Rose, but it was lost through the water and the glass. She frowned, and Rose just snorted. An idea of using signs to communicate crossed her mind, and she wondered vaguely if Kanaya could read English. She supposed not. For the moment, it seemed as if the maintenance closet was the only way for them to communicate.  
For some reason, the lack of communication didn't bother her. She supposed that sounded rude, but it wasn't as if she didn't like speaking to Kanaya.

But this way, Kanaya looking from her world into Rose's own, she felt it was far easier to understand why she was so angry all the time.


	6. Problem

Rose woke up Monday morning in darkness, a large crack of sunlight peeking through her thick bedroom curtains. She sat up slowly, groping blindly for the clock on her nightstand. 9:04 AM - it was the earliest she'd woken up in weeks.  
For a while, she simply sat there, staring blearily at the glass wall of the aquarium, opaque with the sunlight. She tried to remember if there was a reason she was awake so early. A light, hollow-sounding tapping, barely audible, confused her for a moment, before she remembered her guest in the tank. Rose climbed out of bed, opened her bedroom curtains, and turned back to the glass.

Kanaya was floating around the middle of the tank, one hand resting on the glass and the other knocking gently against it. When she saw that Rose was awake and looking at her, her back straightened a bit and the end of her long, green tail swished. It was somewhat similar to the way a dog wagged its tail when it saw its owner, and the thought made Rose snort. Kanaya turned her head and pointed to Rose's bedroom door, under which was a small sheet of white paper, before looking back to Rose and shrugging. Inside the tank, Rose saw that Kanaya had fashioned a sort of nest for herself out of aquarium plants. Beside it, a small pile of mostly-clean bandages had been folded and pinned to the sand with a rock. "Tidy," Rose thought to herself, as she retrieved the paper. Unfolding it, she took a heartbeat to read the few words written there before turning back to Kanaya.  
"It's from the housekeeper," she said quietly, "she visited today."

Kanaya, of course, could not hear this, but Rose was speaking mainly to herself. They'd come so close to being discovered. Rose had an idea then, and after fetching a wipe-off marker from a drawer in her bedside table, drew a crude picture of the housekeeper on the aquarium glass. Next to it she drew the tank, with Kanaya inside. Lastly, a dotted line connected the housekeeper's eyes to Kanaya. Rose raised a questioning eyebrow. On the other side of the glass, she saw Kanaya working over the drawing, her eyes flicking back and forth for a moment, before looking back to Rose and shaking her head. Rose saw her mouth "No".  
A great sigh of relief escaped Rose's lips, and she nearly dropped onto the carpet with gratitude. The housekeeper hadn't even entered her room, because she'd been asleep in it. Wiping her previous drawing off the glass, Rose abandoned the marker on her bed and made her way to the closet behind the tank. Kanaya was waiting for her there, resting her forearms on the lip of the tank.  
"Good morning," she said, not unkindly. Actually, to Rose's surprise, Kanaya's mood seemed to be improving quite rapidly. She dare not bring it up, though, in case the magic dissolved and she returned once more to a dark, brooding alien curled in her bathtub.

She liked this Kanaya much better. The one with her chin resting on her arms, regarding her calmly with an almost-smile on her face. "I feel much better," she said, and it was Rose who smiled.  
"I'm very glad to hear that, Kanaya. Your tail is looking much better. It appears as if your species heal far quicker than humans."  
Rose sat down on an overturned bucket, watching Kanaya watching her. And then, without thinking, she said "What happened that night, when you were attacked?"  
She half-expected Kanaya not to answer, but the mermaid said "I was travelling. There were about five of them on a small boat, with just one of the weapons on board. I was foolish. Their lights caught on my scales."  
Rose hummed in understanding, though she had no scales of her own to sympathize with. Somehow, learning this about Kanaya made her feel closer to her. It was odd, she supposed, that she enjoyed companionship with someone right out of a legend. Folding her arms, Rose leaned back against the wall and looked at Kanaya in a new light. It wasn't as if Rose did not have friends; on the contrary, she had quite a few at school. Though they were nice, she could not imagine herself spending time with them outside of the campus.

Kanaya, on the other hand - and she was plenty embarrassed to admit it - she could imagine talking to for hours. Provided Kanaya felt like talking to her at all that day.  
"You seem occupied," came the pretty voice from the tank lid, and Rose lifted her head from the floor, where she hadn't realized she'd been staring. "I was just thinking. Eventually I'll have to take you back down to the beach so you can leave. I was wondering how I was going to go about that. You'll have to return to your people, correct?"

This statement seemed to make Kanaya nervous. Her eyes shifted to the side, and she pursed her black lips. "That....would not be wise." She took her elbows off the tank rim, resting only her hands there.

"My people have a custom. If you leave the tribe, you do not come back."

"And being attacked by harpoon fishermen counts as leaving? That was hardly your fault."

"It is a measure to keep human attention away from us. Whether or not it was my fault is irrelevant. Those of us who leave our tribes usually die on their own."

"Less risk of them leading humans back to the tribe."

"There is that, yes. We usually live in groups for safety.....so loners naturally do not survive for very long."

Rose ran a hand through her hair. "Don't survive?" she repeated, prompting for further explanation. Kanaya did not respond to this.

"It is the way things are. I knew that from the moment I was attacked. I could not go for help with my own people. How many more would the humans have shot? How many of my tribe's children would not have survived that?" Her voice turned bitter and resentful then, and Rose once again saw the angry, hateful girl she had rescued. Kanaya was frightening, Rose realized, but only when she was mad.

"So if you return to the ocean, you'll die?"

Kanaya's eyes narrowed a little, as if she were guessing what Rose was thinking. "That is none of your concern."

"It is perfectly within my concern."

"By what logic?"

Kanaya had gone very still; Rose could no longer hear the quiet and rhythmic swishes of her tail in the water. No longer glaring, Kanaya nevertheless fixed her gaze on the blonde human, who was suddenly hesitant to answer

"I rescued you from dying, I will not deliver you to death in the same breath. Also," Rose took a tiny breath, "I feel that we are becoming friends."

This didn't seem to be the answer Kanaya was expecting. She sunk down in the tank a little in embarrassment, before offering Rose a tiny smile.

"We are."


	7. Tea

If Rose hadn't been reasonably-convinced that time travel was Not A Real Thing, she may have suspected shenanigans on Kanaya's part. The days seemed to be passing at a sluggish pace (she reasoned the heat may have been at least partially to blame), and so she was rather surprised to open her journal and discover that only two weeks had passed since she had found Kanaya.  
Though the first week had passed without much in terms of conversation between them, but once the hole in her tail had healed over, Kanaya seemed to transform. The scowl faded from her face, the accusation from her eyes. She began to offer Rose small smiles from time to time. They stopped talking about their differences, Kanaya's injury: though they avoided talking about what the future held, as if ignoring it could postpone any decisions on the horizon.  
Rose discovered that Kanaya loved music, and Kanaya was equally intrigued upon learning of Rose's knitting hobby. Though she didn't imagine it would be horribly interesting to a mermaid and she feared constantly that she was boring Kanaya, bright, sparkly black eyes never once wavered from the human-handed demonstrations. "You are rather adept at that," the fish-girl had once commented, seemingly without thinking, for she shut her mouth again almost instantly and turned a very pale shade of green.

"I mean.....not to imply......I was under the impression that humans were extremely clumsy and violent," she rushed, and in her haste to explain herself, her pronunciation began to slip back into her native tongue. When she used Rose's name in a harried apology, it came out as more of a "Rrrrhuze" sound, which made the blonde girl giggle. Kanaya had become increasingly frightened of offending Rose somehow, and was fast to admit that she'd misjudged humanity.  
"Try to understand," she explained one afternoon over tea (Kanaya had delighted in discovering that particular facet of humanity), as she set her teacup down on the edge of the tank. "We are raised to be afraid, to be wary. Humans have never before shown us such kindness. My mistrust was more instict and less anything personal against you."

Rose, seated on the platform above the tank, nodded. "I do understand. And I don't blame you, not at all."

Kanaya gave Rose that rare, small smile, and stared down into her teacup. "I was very wrong. About you, and about humans in general. You have been very kind to me, and I responded with anger. I am.....ashamed."

"Your behavior was perfectly acceptable, situation considered. We must be very alien to you, as you would be to anyone other than a strange, pale girl with a fascination for the occult."

"Fascination?"

"Fair; it's more of an obsession, really."

The two laughed quietly together in the dim space of the utility closet, lit, in part, by Kanaya's tank. The curtains in Rose's room had been propped open for the first time all summer to allow the light to spill across the glass. Often during the day, Rose would sit on the carpet beside the tank, reading, while Kanaya floated lazily around her tank, the both of them sharing the same sunbeam. It was pleasant, but something was bothering Rose. It was a question that she hadn't thought appropriate to ask before, but worry soon outweighed her nerves.  
"Forgive me if this offends you in any way, but what does your kind eat?"  
Kanaya drained the last of her tea, licked her fangs briefly, and paused to consider this. "My kind, or me?" she asked. A confused frown wound its way onto Rose's face.

"Pardon?"

"My diet is rather unusual for my people."

"Oh." Rose set her own teacup down on top of the box they were using as a makeshift table, and waited for Kanaya to continue. She seemed to be translating in her head for a few heartbeats. "In fact," she said slowly, "every member of my tribe hunted the sea life for sustenance, save myself. Of course, I hunted for the tribe, the same as any adult did, but none of it was for me."  
Rose rested her elbows on the box, her hands supporting her chin. Kanaya stared into the middle distance, lost in her own memories. "On occasion, one of us would be born.....different. It is hard to explain. We call them "moon children", for their eyesight is superior in the absence of light. They are fast, and they can live for two lives' time, though it comes at a price.  
"We - I - feed on the life force of others."

It didn't seem as if Kanaya liked admitting this. She ducked her head just slightly, still staring into a place Rose would never see, could not understand. She wondered if the mermaid was missing someone, but didn't feel it prudent to ask. Instead, she veered off to the side of that topic.  
"Did you have family back in your tribe?"

Kanaya's eyes refocused. "No, my mother died when I was young. I did have someone very close to me, however."

"Ah. Your mate?"

Kanaya gave Rose a wry smile. "No, but he was the nearest thing I had to family."  
Rose was horrified to realize that Kanaya's last statement filled her with an odd sense of joy. She squashed it down almost violently, repressing the urge to bang her head against the wall.  
“You must be worried,” Rose managed after a moment of chewing her lip. The jade-blood made an odd face close to a smirk, but her eyes were too sad. “Not particularly. Karkat is more than capable of taking care of himself, as well as the rest of our tribe. He is very strong. Stronger than I ever was, and far too smart to go hunting alone.”

Kanaya no longer seemed to be in the mood to talk. Leaving her to her thoughts, the human girl withdrew from the utility closet and settled back into the sofa in the living room as Kanaya sunk slowly beneath the water.  
Homework papers were still scattered about on the floor and coffee table, depressingly blank. The journal was on the table beside them, still open to her last entry. Pausing for a moment to collect her thoughts, she retrieved her pen from the carpet and began to write.

_June 16th_  
_“From what little I’ve learned of mermaids from Kanaya, they are not usually this polite. I choose to believe that Kanaya’s kindness is a result of her just being a kind person, and not a result of her injury, as she would likely have me believe._  
_She has never once taken her anger out on me, though I know she is hurting. There is only so much an aquarium tank can do for someone who spent their whole life in an ocean._  
_I don’t know how to help her. Asking would likely only upset her further, since she made it perfectly clear that she cannot go back to the ocean._  
_It is horribly selfish, but I find myself not wanting her to anyway._

_She has not asked for any kind of sustenance since I found her. I am beginning to worry. Every day, though it is gradual and hardly noticeable, she looks more and more haggard. I fear she’s losing energy she needs to heal, but Kanaya hasn’t spoken a word of complaint.”_

Her pen paused, hovering above the paper. Something came back to her, suddenly and all at once, and she set her pen down between the pages before padding back to the utility closet. Kanaya was nowhere in site, having retreated back into the tank prior.  
“Kanaya?” she said softly, and a few seconds later the mermaid was resting her arms on the tank edge again. She looked troubled, but not upset, to Rose’s relief.

“Earlier, when I asked about the dietary habits of your species, you mentioned something about life force. I was wondering if you could elaborate on that.”

Winding her way back up to the platform, Rose watched Kanaya mulling over this for a moment. She sat down, her legs hanging over the tank lip and her hands resting in her lap. She still wasn’t entirely sure Kanaya would answer, but then -

“Blood. I am required to feed on blood.”

Rose looked thoughtful. “I see. That’s similar to human Vampire folklore. What kind of blood, if I may ask?”

“Any kind will usually do, though I am personally more fond of carnivores. Sharks and the like.”

Trying not to stare too obviously at Kanaya’s fangs, Rose cleared her throat, before mumbling “I will see what I can do. We can’t have you starving.” Then, before Kanaya could reply, she hurried back to the living room, and sat back down before the coffee table.  
Exactly how she was to get food for Kanaya eluded her, but somewhere in the back of her subconscious she knew she’d have to do it soon. Kanaya was far too weak to hunt, and if Rose were to believe what the jade-blood had been hinting, she’d be slaughtered out there anyway once she was on her own. It was hard, trying to think of ways to feed your legendary sea-creature alien vampire mermaid houseguest. It was hard, and nobody understood.  
“I’ll think of a way,” she told herself quietly, and then again for emphasis.  
Rose then picked up her pen and moved back over to her blank homework papers. Words began to flow without effort from her hand.

_“Legendary creatures and beings of myth are real, though they cannot be found by searching for them - they must come to you, in their own time, and with their own purpose………..”_


	8. Mistake

If Kanaya were smart, she'd have already returned to the sea.  
Then again, if she were smart, she'd have never gone out on her own, and she certainly wouldn't have been seen by humans.

If Kanaya were smart, she'd have also killed Rose by now.

As she floated lazily in her tank berating herself, she couldn't find the will within to feel particularly bad about any of this. She was, however, confused. Rose would sooner ingest a live blowfish than return her to the beach.  
Humans were strange.

Through the glass, she saw her asleep on her curious white fluffmound, and felt no desire whatsoever to kill her. She'd become used to that, but again - it didn't bother her nearly as much as it should. She felt safe there, away from the sea but near to someone who took care of her, though it put Rose in danger to do so.  
She stirred in her sleep, and rolled towards the warm sunlight.  
In retrospect, Kanaya was never a shining example of what it truly meant to be a troll. _Ausardia_ \- what the elders taught her meant living from her teeth and tail, fighting for the tribe first, with humans as her prey - did not ever come naturally to her. The joy of merely being alive was enough to carry her. Not once did she ever feel what her sisters felt, the insatiable urge to rend. Their crazed eyes used to haunt her at night until she learned to pretend.  
The females of her tribe were taught to enchant humans with their singing, their eyes, to lure them beneath the waves where they would finally sustain her people. They were livestock; savage, dumb beasts with sharp sticks, all too easily swayed by beauty and the allure of unknown.

Kanaya liked to think that she had often suspected otherwise, and now knew better for sure, having met one face-to-face. The shame she would bring upon her family. She was almost disappointed in yourself, until a sharp sting of pain in her throat had her feeling scared instead. She'd been hungry when she left the tribe, and she didn't recall how much time had passed since then. More than 20 suns, at least. Her head against the glass, she closed her eyes and really tried not to think about her only available food source, because she liked Rose, and she owed her.

The sun felt nice on her skin, against her fins, which glittered feebly when she stared at them through squinted eyes. She'd torn the one on her back in the accident, but couldn't reach around to inspect it, and she didn't really want to invite Rose to touch her wounds again, anyway. Her hands were too kind, too wrong. It would have helped her feel better about being a deserter if she weren't so terribly interesting.  
And intelligent. And nice to look at.

Kanaya's forehead thunked softly, rhythmically, against the glass.

Somewhere in the distance, far beyond the walls of Rose's home, she heard yelling. It drilled into her temples, seeming to vibrate through the glass, and she drew back with disgust. It buzzed somewhere in the back of her skull. Tail thrashing about angrily, Kanaya's head whipped back and forth as she listened, trying to locate the sound. It didn't seem to be coming from anywhere in particular, and only grew worse when she pulled herself up and out of the tank to sit on the ledge beside it. All at once, something yanked at her insides like a fishing hook, and a familiar voice boomed in her head-

KANAYA!

Feebly, desperately, Kanaya all but fell back into her tank and pressed herself against the far corner glass, leaning as close as she could to where the voice was coming from. Beyond Rose's bedroom window, she could see the beach, and the waves lapping lazily at the sand. Too far away.

Karkat

IT'S ABOUT FUCKING TIME! I'VE BEEN CALLING OUT FOR YOU FOR SUNS!! I ONLY JUST GOT CLOSE ENOUGH TO REACH YOU. _ZU LURREAN?_ ARE YOU ON LAND?

Yes

ARE YOU ALRIGHT.

Yes Im Fine

I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD.

His mind-voice broke an octave, wavering for a moment, before he pressed on angrily.

COME HOME.

I Cant Anymore And You Know That As Well As I Do

BULLSHIT. COME HOME WITH ME.

Karkat I Cant

KANAYA.

Ive Been Hurt By Humans

Kanaya's moirail, her soulmate, had never been lost for words quite as badly as he was then. All he let forth was a choked, pained noise, and Kanaya's heart ached.

I Cant Ever Go Home

But Im Safe Here

I'M NOT......GOING BACK WITHOUT YOU.

They Need You

YOU NEED ME! _ERGEL DUZU!_

_Gelditu Da_

Dont Do This To Me

Kanaya saw her hands curl into fists on the glass before her, and knew that she had to send him away soon. If they discovered he'd gone looking for her, he'd be cast out as she was. With a whole tribe depending on him to hunt for them, there was no way she could allow it.

Im Happy Here

More heartbreaking silence. 

I Cant Swim Anymore

Im A Deserter

Would You Have Me Return To Meet My Death So Easily

_EZ AUSARTZEN._

Would You

Karkat howled, a rage and sorrow so strong she could hear it in his mind, feel it in her scales - but she knew he wouldn't come after her. Not now.

I Was Rescued By A Human Here

She Is Caring For Me

I Cant Help But Feel

FEEL WHAT, KANAYA? THAT YOU'VE MADE A HORRIBLE MISTAKE IN TRUSTING A LAND MONKEY? I AGREE. COME HOME IMMEDIATELY.

Karkat Shut Up

I Cant Help But Feel As Though We May Have Been Wrong About Them

TWO MOMENTS AGO YOU WERE TELLING ME HOW THEY ATTACKED YOU.

Some Did

Large Ones With A Metal Gun

But Not All Humans Are Bad

I Cant Explain It To You Right Now

AT LEAST LET ME SEE YOU. JUST ONCE. I NEED TO KNOW YOU'RE WELL FOR MYSELF.

WOULD YOUR NEW LAND MONKEY PET LET YOU DO THAT?

Her Name Is Rose

I REALLY DON'T CARE. YES OR NO?

Kanaya looked over to where Rose was, to find her sitting up and watching her carefully. A small worried frown had settled between her brows.

I Will Try

With that, Karkat was gone, disappearing back into the sea and out of her mind's range. Kanaya floated back from the glass and offered Rose a small, sad smile. The human girl climbed from her fluffmound and made for the closet behind it, and Kanaya resumed her sitting place on the ledge to wait for her.  
Rose did not immediately speak, but sat down beside Kanaya and dangled her bare legs in the water. One thing Kanaya had learned about Rose was that she was unusually perceptive. It had bothered her at first, but the jadeblood had slowly warmed to it.

"Karkat contacted me," she managed after a moment, and began to rub at the skin on the inside of her wrist with her thumb. "He wanted me to come home."  
For another long moment, Rose didn't speak. Slowly, hesitantly, she reached over and laid her hand on Kanaya's.

"I'm sorry," the blonde human said, "I can't imagine how hard this must be for you, but....if you'll allow me, I'd like to lend my ear." Her fingers twitched a little as she added "...if you feel like talking about it, I'm here."  
Kanaya breathed slowly and evenly through her mouth, staring furiously at where Rose's pale skin touched her own. She could feel inside of her wrist thrumming, hear the steady beating of her heart, sense the hot blood in her veins, just inches away.  
She didn't have time to warn Rose before she was leaning in.

An odd, silky veil had settled over her senses. "Your company is appreciated," she purred, revelling in Rose's slight jump in the time it took her to realize Kanaya had spoken. Then she was training wide, lavender eyes on jade, and Kanaya was smiling with just the right amount of shyness, gripping Rose's hands now. To her delight, she didn't look afraid, only surprised, and.....embarrassed?  
_'Foolish girl,'_ a part of her murmured with glee, and her hands slid up Rose's arms, leaving goosebumps in their wake. A very faint dusting of mouth-watering cerise had graced itself across the bridge of her nose, and she appeared incapable of speech. Kanaya held her gaze perfectly, trapping her, leaning so close she could feel Rose's quickened breaths on her lips. Frozen in place. Caught completely. Prey.  
She licked her fangs. Rose's eyes darted down, and back up. The blush spread to her cheeks.

_'Do it do it do it, do it now, undo her make her give herself to you-'_

Curling her tail fins loosely around Rose's feet, she brushed her fingertips along Rose's jawline, to her neck, where her pulse beat out a frantic rhythm. Her own throat hissed in assent, aching, every cell in her body singing in anticipation.  
Tilting her head just slightly, Kanaya had just barely brushed her lips to Rose's when everything came to a screeching halt. The veil tore, and she felt as if her insides had dropped straight out of her. _'This isn't right,'_ the rational part of her brain begged in the pause, _'we can't do this. Not to Rose.'_

Kanaya jerked her head back with trememdous effort, covering her nose and mouth with her hand to block out the tantalizing smell of Rose's neck. The blonde's eyes were focused, careful, but her face was a painting of quiet wonder.  
Slipping back into the tank hurriedly, Kanaya curled up in her nest of plants and buried her head very firmly in her arms, hugging her tail around her to seal her off from the outside world.  
She was ashamed. Disgust rose like acid from her belly and burned further into her aching throat. Somewhere up above the water, she heard the closet door closing. Rose had left.

_'Not to her. Never to her.'_


End file.
